Amotekun is absolutely constitutional and legal. Amotekun is a regional security outfit, formed by states in the South-west geopolitical zone of Nigeria to reinforce the Nigeria Police, with the stated aim of improving security of life and property of Nigerians.
Nigerian Constitution of 1999 (as amended) makes clear the inviolability of the right to life, which is to be enjoyed by ‘every human being’.
The right to life can appropriately be described as the ‘mother’ of all human rights, given that other rights including socio-economic rights, depend on the existence of life, which is mankind’s most valuable asset from which all other human possibilities arise.
As the African commission on human and peoples' rights has stated "The right to life is the supreme right of the human being. It is basic to all human beings and without it all other rights are without meaning."
Therefore, measures like Amotekun is entirely consistent with government’s positive obligations to respect, promote, and ensure conditions that are conducive to the exercise of the right to life.
State governors should move to enact laws to perfect the operations of Amotekun.
State governors should move to enact laws to perfect the operations of Amotekun.
Governments at the federal and state levels are obligated to take preventive measures to: protect citizens’ life; and to take actions through legislation and other measures to prevent loss of life.
The African commission has stated in the case of Association of Victims of Post Electoral Violence that states must use their ‘legal, technical, human and material resources’ to produce the expected result of guaranteeing the protection of the right to life.
Nigeria has ratified the African charter on human and peoples’ rights, which has become part of our laws.
